Monster
by Artanis
Summary: Where does the raw material for making mutt's really come from? Set near the end of Mockingjay with flashbacks to the 65th Hunger Games. A small AU ficlet. Finnick/Annie with a little Finnick/OC via flashback.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This will be short, probably no more than three chapters. I had a dream about it and just couldn't put the story out of my mind until it had been written. It's AU and also from an extremely weird point of view. Hopefully you don't find the narration too confusing. Treat it gently, mi-dears…

"_I am! Yet what I am none cares or knows, _

_My friends forsake me like a memory lost,_

_I am the self-consumer of my woes!" ~_John Clarke, _'I Am'_

I was a girl once, I think. I cannot remember…only that there was blood. When I was a girl there was a lot of blood and faces. Then I was nothing, I was blackness and emptiness and I had no name. I have not been anything like a girl for a long time now. I am not even sure if there is an 'I' anymore. There is a 'we'. Creatures like me mill around, scaly hide rubbing scaly hide as we teem through the tunnels. This is a terrifying reality I am born into.

My body has scales and claws and I can see and smell everything in the gutter. My belly aches and peacemakers-flesh-run from me, the sounds they make are painful. I have powerful legs and my jaws are strong enough to rend these humans-yes, that is what they are-apart. But the ache in my belly…it is so much worse if I stay to sate my hunger on these feeble, squalling things in their white skins. _Katnissss_, I do not know what this sound means, but the air hisses by my sharp teeth as I speak it, again and again. It is the only sound I can make, apart from the clicking of my teeth and the clacking of claws against stone.

Again, there is a lot of blood from the White Skins. I ignore it, we press on. We can almost smell it, now. What we have been hunting. _Katnisssss._ They are like the previous humans, running and weak. We are faster, we are coming and somehow, tasting the white and black ones blood will make the ache go away. Something in me knows.

"_Mutts_!" Voice! Confused, I pause. That sound she makes, it is familiar. I have heard it before…but not- Razorlike teeth rake across my tail and my jaws shut on the attackers neck and I snap it. I drop the body for the rest, let them be distracted by it for I will feast on the _Katniss _flesh and my pain will leave me. Her smell is sweet and delicious and there is enough stink here-it is like the polluted water's of ocean front's in District 8, nothing like what my home had with an ocean so blue-I am distracted by the scent of blood, salty like water. There are two human's waiting before a great metallic thing with teeth. I avoid it, many of my siblings are not so lucky. These human's shoot stinging darts, but their bodies break under my claws. There heads pop like grapes and still there is no relief from pain.

We are in a final tunnel, the Katniss is staring at me from across a river of filth. My brethren swarm, they are pushing me towards the edge-! I leap and catch a narrow bridge, scramble onto it. My claws ache from the effort, I am not a creature that was well made. The hiss escapes my throat, the other's are following across the thin bridge, but the Katniss is climbing. One of their males is helping her-I dash forward as something jumps at me-I am fast and I dodge a…

_Trident_. Something happens then, something that is far away from pain and confusion.

_Sunlight strikes the waves in a road of golden light and the horizon stretches before me, a vast and beautiful thing. The sun burns, an orange disc as she sinks below the brackish green sea. I perch on the prow of the wooden boat like a figure head, my toes grip the sodden, salt-water swollen timbers. Dolphin's leap in our wake and my hair(I cannot see it, but I can feel it.)blows back from my face in the fresh, salty air that I can taste._

"_Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at dawn-"_

"LOOK OUT!" A dark haired human lashes out at me with a glittering steel claw. I snap at him as he shoves the Katniss up the ladder. She is slow and selfish; my body is suddenly filled with hatred and I leap, reaching with a claw and slashing at her ankle. With a cry off shock she squirms away into sunlight. _Sunlight on waves…_gravity brings me crashing back onto the tiles of the sewer. The world is in disarray: my siblings are frantic for blood and there is a flash of silver from the corner of my eye.

He is in danger. The lizard mutt's have him backed against a wall beside the ladder, he cannot use the trident to defend himself any more than once. The boy-I see him glistening with salt-water and sunlight in another life-lunges and misses. He is off balance and three descend on him, the rest jostling me as they attempt to get up the ladder. I jump, over their backs and with a clawed hind foot slash an attacker in the face. She staggers, shrieking with blood pouring from the torn jelly that is her bulbous, reptilian eye and loses her purchase on the slimy tile, falling back into the primordial stink of the sewers main line. I stand over the boy, who is lying on his back between my hind claws, tip back until I am erect and let out a terrible and furious hiss. The other's retreat from my prize and I bow my head, close my jaws on the scruff of the boy's outer skin and pick him up. He has a familiar smell that fills my head with memories.

I here the Katniss crying to him, but I ignore this. I run with my boy, I must save him. Because I know him, I have seen him and I will not let the others rip him apart. I have made it just around the corner as a pillar of flame engulfs the others. I feel no remorse, only relief. He moans in my jaws and I growl, surging across a narrow bridge and dashing down another tunnel. He is hurt and something frantic grips me as a carry him, struggling to cradle his body now in claws that were made for ripping flesh from bone. It seems like hour before I think to use my nose, sniff out a place where the air is more filtered. There is a small room, filled with dials and pipes and it's door ajar, far from where the fire and mutt's were.

Entering, I drop the boy and turn from him; dragging my tail through the door and using my clumsy fore-claws to grip the latch and pull it shut. The boy makes a horrified moaning sound and I look at him in the dim florescent light. He is propped against a wall, and there are claws marks on his arms and shoulders. He is hurt, but not too hurt to live. Something about the sight of him does not satisfy me…I realize then that something about my vision is off. In many ways, I see him better than in the dreams. But I do not see colour's as well, I think.

Lowering my head, I approach him slowly. He should not be afraid, he should not look so revolted. He had only ever smiled at me, cried with me. I nudge his side with my scaled snout as gently as I can. The belly pain is back, to remind me that I didn't kill the Katniss. But I don't care…I just want the boy to remember me and to feel no fear-it is instinct that causes me to leap back as he slashes at me with a knife, landing a glancing scratch to my face.

"Fucking monsters…greedy, aren't you? Wanted me all to yourself? Come on, you stupid mutt! Come and get me-" The sound I make is not a hiss…it is closer to the sounds he was making before. It is a deep cry of pain, but the serrated fangs in my mouth warp it and give even that a sound of hissing. He does not remember me, maybe I am just a monster made to think it was a girl. I wish he would stab me, bury his knife to it's hilt in my skull. My claws click as I retreat to the door, hind legs folding beneath me. He stares at me, his chest heaving with harsh breaths. "Go to hell, Snow! I wont be tricked…you, your just a Mutt."

"Katnisssss…" That is all my throat will allow me to say, but the sound of it is not a threatening hiss. It is a moan of agony. I wrap my tail around my clawed feet and bow my head, clutching at it with my talons.

"Say it again, and I'll kill you." He is too hurt to come and attack me, he is too tired. If he were going to try, he already would have. I curl up and allow my eyes to unfocus…I wish I could close them, but I have no eyelids.

My mind retreats to a state something like sleep: I want to go back to the sea, I used to live in an ocean place. _We _used to live in an ocean place. There was water. With miles and miles of creamy sand and red cliffs that crashed to the sea. When I was a child, I would play in that sand. I'd catch things in tide-pools, run giggling through the surf. Or later, sit on the salt-washed rocks and bathe in the sun. To fall asleep in his arms, with the sound of waves rushing in and out with the rhythm of breath...

* * *

Time has passed when I awake and bring my vision into focus. I am in pain, more than I was before. He is still asleep and I move to his side and touch him with the tip of a claw. He jumps with a panic and flinches away from me, his knife poised. Slowly, so as not to startle him further, I press my forehead against the blade. For a moment, his face hardens and the blade presses into my flesh, blood beading around it's thirsty edge. Then it is gone, the knife and his bloody expression. It is replaced with fear and horror.

"What-_who_-are you?" I gaze at him, but I cannot remember. He must remember, he must know me. I have forgotten my own name, but his…comes back to me.

" 'inac." I try, but it is not the right sound. Again. " 'Innick."

Tears run trails through the grime that coats his angular, handsome face. The knife clatters to the floor and a sob bursts from his lips. I sit beside him on my hind claws and meet his outstretched hand with a spread talon. Finnick looks into my eyes, not at the scaly snout-ed lizard face, and recognizes me.

"Hal. Oh god, _Halcyone." _

Something aches behind my eyes, but I cannot cry_. _Mutt's and monsters were not creatures intended to shed tears._  
_


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Long wait . Many, many apologies guys! My computer is full of Trojans so I had to buy a new one to keep up with online classes and my writing was a little blocked. Should be set though, just have to post stuff! A mini chapter of sorts...more soon(and this time, I mean soon).

_"The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled." **~ William Blake**_

"Halcy. Oh God, I'm so sorry…I couldn't save you. You wouldn't _let _me save you… then you were _gone_." Finnick makes terrible choking sounds that come from somewhere deep in his throat. I am trying to remember, but I get images and scarce facts. All that I can comprehend is filled with a terrible, heavy feeling that makes me wish I had died with the other's. That to be consumed in a glorious burst of flame is better than to feel this…longing.

"But you remember me, how much do you remember?" As I look at him, an image flashes across my mind. Every muscle tenses as I spring back from him, so violently that I crash into the other side of the tiny room.

It is a memory of Finnick, slathered in blood and holding a trident high above his head and poised to strike. But it is the after image I am left with, of a man in surgical scrubs and splattered, covered in my blood. Suddenly, I remember it all. My name is Halcyone Undine, from District 4. I lived in a small house in the poorer fishing neighborhood with my mother and stepfather and their three daughters. My father was lost at sea on the day I was born, the day of the reaping. On my fifteenth birthday, my step sister-

" 'Ags!" The syllables of a name that I cannot reconcile with a memory feel like razorblades in my throat. I _do _remember razorblades-no, _scalpels_-! Finnick is on his knees, reaching out to me with a look of desperation.

"No! Shush, shush…Hal, calm down. It's alright, it's okay. Stop trying to remember, just let me tell you! I'll tell you everything, alright?" I flinch back from his hand, reign in the urge to snap at it and cower instead. It is then that I feel it, the warmth of his hand and the smoothness of his skin. His thumb as it brushes beneath one reptilian eye. The gesture is meant for a human face and a new feeling, one of revulsion rises within me. Body and mind I have been warped, twisted and violated. I may have the vague recollection of who I was, but I am not Finnick's Halcyone anymore.

" Hal, just listen. It'll be like when Mags told us stories, when we were little. Do you remember-" And as he tells me, I do remember pieces of what my life was. They are vivid fragments, pieces of memory that turn to the full, lovely dreams my broken mind had been searching for and lacked…

* * *

In District 4, being born on the day of the reaping is an ill omen. And Four, being a district comprised primarily of sailor's and fishwives, is a district that takes it's superstitions very seriously. Finnick and I never thought of it that way, though. We felt like we were defying the reaping by daring to both be born on the day that the Capitol sentences two of our number to die.

The District had names for us, they thought we were ocean changelings. That one day we would sprout tails and plunge back into the sea from whence we came. How we earned our reputation as otherworldly denizens is a mystery. I speculated that it had something to do with the fact that, though we came from two completely different sets of parents, we were born within hours of one another and during the fiercest storm that District 4 had seen since the dark days. Finnick to bloody dawn and I to the blue velvet of night. It was the same storm that killed my father and was nearly the death of Finnick's, too. Other's as well, in fact, but to mention that takes away from the sea tale glory of the fact that we came to being amid death and strife to young mothers.

We'd been friends since we learned to swim, after nearly drowning each other. I can no longer remember who challenged who to a match of who can hold their breath the longest, but I remember the grin on his round, childish face as the salt-water stung my eyes and how neither of us would yield to the other, even when my lungs burned with an exhilarating pain. We never did find out, because the frantic harbor master dragged us out by our hair and dropped us on the docks, bellowing for our parents and biffing us around like bait fish. Perhaps that's where the myth about us being mer-children came from.

We only ever spoke of the Games once, when we were thirteen:

"Dad wants me to be a Career, you know." Finnick broached the topic one day when we were out checking nets. It shocked me to hear him talk about it, but not to hear that his father had encouraged it. Finnick's father wasn't an unpleasant man by any means and was something of a surrogate father to me, but he dreamed of fame…and he dreamed of revenge. Revenge for Finnick's mother, who'd been killed in the games at the age of eighteen, not nine months after Finnick had been born. Carefully, I reached into a knotted bit of net and extracted a still flipping fish from the tangle. Gently, I lowered the fist with the tiny fish into the water, cupping it in my palm until it had regained enough of it's faculties to swim away.

"Yeah?"

"Well, yeah. Being a Career…it might not be so bad. If I win, all the advantages of instant celebrity status and wealth for the District. Besides, we haven't had a winner in years. Think of the prestige-"

"If you lose, Finnick? What happens then?" I clasp a fish the length of my forearm, swaddled in net and bury my knife in it's pale belly, shiny gut's spilling out around the edges. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the slap of fish guts hitting the inside of the pail.

"You're making holes in the net." He mumbled quietly, taking it from me and patching it.

"Net's can be fixed. This-" I hefted the fish, now flipping convulsively as I dropped it to the bottom of the boat. "-cannot be fixed. Are you asking me to watch you gutted on national television?"

"No, I…of course not! I'd win, Halcyone. I'd come back a victor…then we could live in one of those big mansions together. The one on Cormorant's Bluff. You could come over whenever your mother kicks you out." I knew the house he meant: it was a glorious thing, perching on the edge of the ocean cliff's and lavished with nearly all the furnishings of a capitol house. How did I know this? Finnick and I had snuck in once, despite the danger we'd have been in if we were caught. The difference between he and I was that I kept sneaking in every time I needed a place away from the rest of my family. Reckless, but that is how I was.

"The Games is not about a house, Finnick. It's not about getting a better life for yourself. It's about keeping the districts divided and entertaining a bunch of bloodthirsty twits who've never wanted for anything in their lives." I snarled, with an unusual amount of force.

"You think the only reason I want to be a career is for the house? For Capitol? I want to compete for my mother-" On the defensive now, he drops the net and glares at me.

"_What_? Where the _hell _did that come from? You're thirteen, Finnick! Why don't you have one of your brother's do it? The older and more experienced step-brothers who couldn't catch a fish to save their lives but chase after women all day long-"

"Because she wasn't _their _mother! She was _mine_!"

"Oh, so that'll fix their wagon will it? I'm sure the Capitol will feel so guilty watching an insignificant little thirteen year old from Four die on their television screens. And I'm sure your mother would be overjoyed that your willing to die in the same fruitless competition she did." Finnick leapt to his feet and the small boat rocked precariously in the water. I flung out my hands and gripped the worn edge like a seagull chick trying to recover her balance.

"That's right, I forget that you don't get any more motherly love than I do, do you? Only the sad thing is, your mother's not dead, she just hates you." The comment was alarmingly cruel, even for him. Even he looks surprised by what he had said, his expression suddenly incredibly pitying and apologetic.

But I don't care, the fury at his comment…at the mere suggestion that he would leave me to the mercy of the rest of the district and forgot me to watch his death…I leap up from where I am sitting across from him. In my blind anger, I forget that I had a fish net across my lap, that I am overbalancing the boat. The pail of gut's flies out of the boat and into the ocean as Finnick grabs my arms, perhaps trying to stop me from attacking him or grab me before-the net tangles in my ankles and I hear the splash as the sinker falls over the side and have one glimpse of sparkling green blue water before I am pulled beneath the surface.

A fully grown man, or maybe even Finnick, possesses the physical strength to fight against a fifty pound sinker. If they were expecting it and had taken a good breath. I have none of these advantages and in my panic I kick desperately until the net bites into my skin and I am ensnared beyond a hope of freeing myself. It takes fifteen seconds for me to sink to the seabed and I have already used up half of my precious breath. My eyes burn as I stare at the bleary vision of my entrapped legs and try to rip at the rough netting with my fingers. At least there is sunlight and I can see…a torpedo like shadow cruises across my patch of sunlight and I nearly let all my breath escape in fear. Everyone in the District knows what that shape means. I remember the fish guts that spilled over the side of the boat. I am as good as dead now and over such a silly little thing, a stupid comment that he didn't even mean. I hope Finnick will forgive me, will understand that I was angry because I was afraid. Rebelling against my burning lungs and instincts, I stop thrashing; the erratic movement will only attract the sharks that are drawn in by the scent of the chum.

Something skims across my shoulder and I nearly scream until I feel fingers grip my ankle. It is Finnick, grabbing my chin with his other hand and looking into my eyes to make sure I am still conscious. The assessment lasts less then a second and he pulls my fishing knife from his belt and saws at the net. He is almost halfway through when my vision starts to go black around the edges, my heart pounding in my ears and I take a breath as he cuts my ankles free. There is unbearable pain, unbearable panic and then a kind of blackness and I feel that I am rising…

My back is against something hard and uneven, the air is cold against my wet skin. There something pounding on my chest-This is all the information about my whereabouts I am able to gather before I flail and hit Finnick in the jaw with my arm as I cough up a belly full of seawater all over the rocks.

"HALCYONE! Are you breathing? Look at me! Halcyone." I roll onto my back and the sunlight half-blinds me as I look up into Finnick's frantic expression. It strikes me then, that though I am not really interested in boys yet, Finnick is indeed a very handsome boy. My waterlogged brain decides of it's own accord that this is exactly what I should tell him:

"You're very pretty, Finnick Odair." My lungs feel raw but I smile past the pain. For a moment, he just stares at me in shock, a water droplet quivering on the tip of his nose. Then, he bursts out laughing and collapses to the rock beside me, grabbing my hand and squeezing it fiercely.

"Maybe you wouldn't do so badly in the Hunger Games after all." I murmur after I sit up and realize how far from the boat he was able to swim in such a short time. He glances over at me, his chest heaving as he props himself up on an elbow and squints at where the small boat is anchored, rocking as if on high seas and with sharp, gray fins occasionally breaking through the surface. "Not only are we alive, but we didn't get eaten by sharks."

"Ha. I'm too pretty to die, what's your excuse?" _You, you saved me. _I think, but instead, I force myself to say something equally as snarky.

"All that arrogance, sharks probably cant stomach it." Groaning, I sit up and survey the damage. We have lost our catch and destroyed the net, the sharks will lurk in the area for at least another week or two, anticipating the arrival of more mystery bait. It is not safe to swim back to the boat today. We sit and banter back and forth for a few hours, careful not to talk about any dangerous subject too seriously, until the marginally larger fishing vessels start to come in and one of them finds our little boat. I let Finnick stand up and wave and shout for them. The boat pulls up as close as it can without beaching herself and the captain comes to the side, his District four accent extremely thick.

"Giv me on reesan why I shouldn't leave you little bilge rats here for the gulls to pick at?" Finnick and I answer in unison:

"Because we're pretty?"

* * *

I dont feel like it's quite up to snuff, and shorter than I would have liked but ah well. Review! :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** So last chapter was disappointing, I'm sure. I got really caught up in Halcy's life before the mutt-a-fying that I've sort of lost the 'purer' sense of the story. But I'm going to continue to write it as is, because I enjoy it and I feel compelled to :/. Hopefully it's not a completely bust. Constructive criticism is good, but don't ask me where Annie is. She'll probably be mentioned chapter after next. I just didn't want to cram her into this chapter…also, take into account that we're seeing things through Hal's eyes, and she didn't have much use for Annie(though she knew her!). Plus, Annie is _twelve _in the flashback timeline. More notes on District 4 customs that I inferred from the books(and creative license) plus a serviceable knowledge of fishing towns! Hope it's at the very least a decent chap…

"_We never know the worth of water till the well it dry." ~__**Thomas Fuller**_

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Going out." I snap, gripping the handle of the door in my fist and wrenching it open. A ceramic plate shatters off the wall beside my head and I jerk back in shock instead of making my bid for freedom when I could. In a less than a second, she is upon me and screaming:

"You _dropped out of school_?" Her spittle catches me in the eye as I stagger backwards, forcing the coat wrack between us as she rounds on me like a wild animal, now standing firmly between me and my escape.

"Of course I did! What do they teach us, mother? Fishing! A whole lot of fishing! I already know how to fish as clearly, I'm the one who brings the food home-" I backpedal, trying to defend myself against her assault.

"You come home covered in blood, you didn't buy the damned bread, everything in the house is a _mess_!" She hefts something else and pitches it at me, I use the coat wrack to shatter it before dropping that and running to the back door. I am half-way to the back fence when she screams something that actually stops me dead:

"I took out tesserae on you!" I stumble over my own feet and stop, thinking that this must be a ploy. It is not beneath her to sink to such a level as to threaten me by saying she has taken out tesserae. Typically, in the Districts like ours, we are not so economically depressed that we actually need tesserae. But it is still possible to apply for them, as volunteering as tribute is a difficult business in four and it is better just to be picked. Still, if I were picked; there would be no one to volunteer to take my place. Of this I am certain, the girls in my generation are not born gladiators by any means, every girl tribute for the last three years was screaming with panic by the time she saw the first kill and was brutally cut down not shortly afterwards. My fear that I could become one of these unfortunate tribute's gives me pause.

"You didn't." I turn and she is standing in the door way, her chest heaving. Guilt and anger is written all over her features.

"Five of them, one for each of us. You need to grow up…and you've got more of a chance of being attacked by a shark than by being picked for the games. It's just that there have to be consequences for your actions, Halcyone." There is a bitter taste in my mouth. This was a power struggle for her, she thinks she has won a power struggle against her own daughter by increasing her chances of getting picked to enter the arena. I cannot feel angry with her, though. It would be like being frustrated with a gull for stealing my fish. She doesn't know any better…and I remind her of my father. The real one who died, not the step-father who's shouting about the shattered crockery and the coat wrack. My fists clench and unclench convulsively and I open my mouth to speak:

"I wont be back tonight, probably go out eeling. Don't wait up." I bound over the back fence and head down the hill to the peer, biting my lip until it bleeds.

But I don't go to the docks. It's too dangerous for me to be there at night without Finnick these days. Most of the older fisherman respect a fourteen year old girl somewhat, but the younger ones are too curious. When they offer to share their catch, it means something else entirely. Instead I take a shortcut through a few people's backyards and take the overgrown and dusty road to victor's village.

District 4's village is less ostentatious than most of the village's in the other Districts. The houses are just as lovely, but more emphasis is placed on the view and the quality of the waterfront than on the cohesiveness of an exclusive neighborhood. I go to the mansion on Comorant's Bluff and, careful to make sure there are no peacekeepers in the vicinity, I proceed to look through the rhododendron bushes for the broken basement window. They've become even more overgrown since last I was here and I'm snapping branches left and right, fighting to get through what seems like an impenetrable hedge when I hear the sound. Kind of a croaking that is-I think-intended to be laughter. I shuffle out of the flower bushes like a clown fish emerging from an anemone and face the tiny old woman who is bent double with either mirth or arthritis. Magdalene Row, District 4's first victor and the only one interested in training our tribute's.

"What's so funny?" I snap, plucking twigs and leaves from my hair. She gives a hacking cough and brings a pipe to her lips, signaling an end to her fit of chuckling. She takes her time in answering me, puffing a few noxious smoke rings before turning her aquamarine blue gaze to me.

"Da ya need a playce to stay, Undine?" Her knowledge of my name surprises me. Mags is never in the District except for the reapings.

"Maybe." The difficulty I have keeping my voice steady is pathetic. My nerves are too raw after the encounter with my mother and as a result I've not been as cautious as I should have been. If a little old lady can catch me breaking and entering, who knows how easily peacekeepers could have caught me. Stealing, breaking and entering and murder are all punishable by death in our District. "How do you know my name?"

"Come's with me age. That, and yer the spittin' image of your father. Come aylong, then." Mag's hobbles a little as we make our way down from the mansion, further down the road to the beach front where she lives in a tiny cottage.

She feeds me a kind of seaweed broth with braised crab meat, a meal that she caught and gathered herself and that I try to refuse. But I was starving and she was pushy about it, telling me she had all the food in the world. Even though the only capitol food in the house is fluffy white loaves of bread and creamy butter, staples of District's 12 and 10. Much of the cottage, apart from the most obvious conveniences, is rustically designed. Somehow, I had always imagined that Hunger Game's victor's were required to be grand and showy and that anything less was undesirable. Who wouldn't want to live in splendor after having had to do something so horrific?

"Well, the young lad who brings me eggs 'ery week doesna lie…yar a fair one at that." My mind has to translate her old 4 vernacular and when I catch her meaning, my cheeks turn pink with a flush of blood. Not embarrassment so much as irritation, looks are no good if they're the only thing you're remembered for.

"That boy also says Peacekeeper Jameson let yer mam take out five tesserae on ya today. So I been figurin' you might show up 'ere eventually. Though it'd be a lie to say I didn't ope that the boy migt catch up with you afore then." Mags is puttering with something at her cutting board as I realize who the boy is.

"Finnick, he brings you eggs?"

"Oh aye, that's his name. How silly of me ta forgit et." Silly? Mags hadn't won the Hunger Games by being 'silly' and she was too self-sufficient to be senile.

"Whatever." I shake my head and ignore her comment. Because I came here, I didn't go to Finnick. I could take care of myself. My selfishness may have extended over many things, but not Finnick. And not lately. If I'd been getting attention, he'd been gaining an entourage. It had become more and more apparent as we'd 'grown up' that I didn't possess Finnick's affinity for people and social endeavors. We were still the very best of friends, but more often than not I took to wandering by myself these days.

"Yull be turnin' fifteen soon…ur not worried about those tesserae? I know it doesn't mat-er ter Finnick, he's ben training to volunteer-" I nearly choke on a hunk of buttered bread. "He hasn't told ya, then?"

"Finnick tells me everything." I mutter stiffly. "What do you reckon his chances of…winning are?"

"Good. He's a clever boy, yer Finnick. Cept for the fact neither of ye can keep yer heads down and stay out a trouble. Allways in the eye o' the storm with ye two." She chuckles darkly and stirs something on the stove with a wooden spoon. I stare at her for a moment and then try to finish my bread. It has turned to ash in my mouth, sticks in my throat.

"I have to go. Thank you." I'm out the door before she can even turn.

* * *

"Ladies first," The sun is dazzling on the pier as I stand in my allotted place with the rest of the fourteen year old girls(If your birthday is the day of the reaping, your still counted in the previous year, though your number of entries is not subject to this), nearly everyone of them trembling. It is impossible that I will be picked and even if I am, very possible that someone will volunteer who is older than I am. Taking a deep, steadying breath, I glance over at Finnick, standing just a ways from me with the rest of the boys. His gaze is focused forward to where Odessa is still scrabbling around in the glass bowl with a ridiculous grin on her face. She likes to make us wait, like she gets some sick kick out of our suspense. She should not be so cheerful: Last year our male tribute, who we'd all expected to win, had gotten gutted on national television. He'd been strong and capable, but he'd trusted the other careers too much and woken up to them ripping his intestines out like eels boring into a bait carcass. No one is eager to be the next Career tribute. Except for maybe Finnick…I don't know for sure, because I never brought it up. If he was going off to die this year, I would not have us part on bad terms. And if I didn't know for sure that he would volunteer, I could pretend it wasn't going to happen.

I glance at him and see that he's also looking my way, his expression grave. I wink at him playfully and smile despite my tension. After all, I wont be picked. I'm more full of life, more full of District 4 than any girl of any age group. The sea, all that was fate and joy would never let me be picked in the reaping. No world would be so cruel and brazen as to sacrifice my bright future at the altar of chance. I look into Finnick's sea-green eyes and he smiles back at me, not as genuine in relief as mine but full of love.

Odessa says a name and suddenly I'm standing alone in the sunlight, everyone has backed away from me like I have the plague. Even the boys have scuttled away, Finnick lost in the press of bodies. I turn my head this way and that, lost in the empty silence. Then, with one earsplitting scream; noise rushes back to my world.

"Halcyone Undine?" Odessa prompts into her mike, looking at me questioningly. I realize that my face must be on every television in Panem and my expression of confusion crumbles quickly into a smirk. My legs feel leaden but I force myself to stride up to the stage. I try to smile prettily, but when I catch sight of my face the expression is no more welcoming than a barracuda's. Satisfactory, though. Capitol likes two kinds of tributes: the charming and the deadly. I shall have to settle for the latter. And is that not exactly the expression a siren would give to the sailor's she was trying to drown? A knowing grin of malice…

Every scream that my mother makes, every jagged cry of my name sounds like a gull screaming across an empty sea.

"Well, welcome to the Hunger Games! A round of applause for our newest tribute, everyone." There are scattered applause for me and a few hoots of 'Siren', but many are too nervous to do more. I feel that there is somehow a sick sense of relief among the crowd: the siren, the sea temptress demon, is being exorcised. Some of the older fisherman are making the shape of a mast across their chests with two fingers. Just for their benefit, I smirk at the crowd.

"Are there any volunteers?" Odessa calls out, waiting a beat. I glance around once and see that no one is stepping forward. In a last, desperate fling of hope, I try to do my own recruiting:

"What, none of you brave enough?" I am fighting for a lost cause. All of these girls hate me for various petty, feminine reasons. "I'll fight you for it. Ursula-"

"Fuck off and go die, Siren. Everyone knows you'd lose on purpose, anyway." My heart sinks to the bottom of the ocean with her callous statement. But I shrug and smile at the camera's.

"Worth a shot, I suppose. They'd miss you too much at the Mermaid's Purse, anyhow." I wave my hand in her direction and District Four snickers.

"And now for our male tribute! Come on now, who's feeling lucky?" Finnick will not volunteer this year, as I have been chosen. Perhaps I shall win, perhaps I will come back rich and famous. Then we can live in the house together on the bluff and never-

"Finnick Odair." Someone is suddenly at my elbow, their wizened hand gripping it tightly. Mags is over sixty years old and yet it is this tiny old women who keeps me on my feet, counsels me with her eyes not to show any emotion as Finnick walks mechanically up the platform. No matter what happens, I realize that I cannot win these games. Either way I will have lost something precious…the little old victor clenches my arm in a death grip.

I feel as though I am in the water again, sinking below a surface littered with fish intestines and blood. The sharks are circling, their sand-paper rough skin scuffing my legs. I cant breathe as I stare into the eyes that bore into mine with a depth and colour like all the thousand fathoms of the sea. I want to scream, but the broken bit of my mind that is the fifteen year old Halcyone from District 4 hides and allows the Siren to emerge.

"Hey Good-looking." I lightly cuff Finnick's arm with my fist. It takes him a millisecond to understand and then he has a smile in place, the smile he used to use to charm all our female teachers. But it is his eyes that give him away to me and no doubt to the rest of the district as he turns to face them.

"So, are we going to let the young ones have all the fun? Yes? No? Any volunteers from the boys side?"

_Please…Oh sweet sea, please. I can't do it, I won't do it…WHY? Please, please, please…_But no one volunteers. Why would they? To a man, they are sea-farer's. Every sailor knows that fate and faith are what truly keep a boat from capsizing. Clearly, some great oceanic divinity is reigning down it's vengeance upon the fickle fish children.

"Now, proud citizens of District 4, I give you your tributes for the 65th annual Hunger Games…Finnick Odair and Halcyone Undine!" I was right before, the cheering does sound relieved. Besides, why would any of them risk their lives for us, even if there is glory? Everyone knows that Finnick's father has wanted him to be in the games since he was twelve years old. I look at his father now. It is such a pitiful thing to see a grown man cry. Finnick reaches for my hand, interlaces our fingers. Squeezing my hand so tightly it hurts he raises our arms to the sky in triumph. Together, having grown our fish tales at last, going on to become the horror's that they always guessed that we would be.

How right they were…

* * *

Ah hell, I'm too tired and behind in my classes to bother with a clarification note. Pop me off a message if you're curious :P. Thanks!


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Another chapter. R & R please! If I'm writing drivel, tell me. So I can improve…or just stop altogether. I've got two different versions of each chap at this point, and may put the Annie version back into the previous one.

"_I am the shark among the fishes, the ganges among rivers…I am become death, destroyer of worlds." _~**Bhavagad Gita**

The Stockyard. Where tributes go to die. The glass tube encases me and I look into the eyes of my stylist. He is crying as he places one hand against mine. This pointless gesture, it may be the last friendly human contact I ever receive. I wish I could claw through the slim barrier and grip his hand, feel the real brush of skin instead of the kiss of cool glass. But I cant and the platform rises, blocking him from view.

The sun glitters off the cornucopia, the white sand around my circle will be a blessing from the heat. But beyond that there is cliff on nearly every side of us, one narrow strip of rock leads to the craggy mainland…beneath us is the water. I judge the distance to be no more than fifty feet, jumpable if necessary. But if fourteen years worth of watching the Hunger Games has taught me something, it's that things are never what they seem. There could be something nasty lying in wait beneath the waves.

I survey the packs around the cornucopia, look for the weapons. A throwing spear, almost like a harpoon and a fierce looking cutlass a few feet further in. That is perhaps too risky, especially considering the female from District 7, who can throw an axe with unerring accuracy and has the biceps to prove it. Spear is to cumbersome, I will need something smaller. I see a blade about the length of my hand sheathed and lying about ten feet from me, a water-proof backpack about five feet from that. It never occurs to me to flee, even though Mags said I should. I was too frightening to the other's in training not to be the target of at least one freaked and adrenalin-shot tribute. I cannot run without taking a weapon and the only tribute I will choose to run from willingly is looking at me out of the corner of his eye. The weapon I grab will not be for him.

We have not spoken in public, when we were in front of the camera's. Mags tells us that we are much more valuable to our sponsors separately than we are together. We cannot both win the Hunger Games, after all. But part of me worries for Finnick, for when he wins…why will he be valuable? What could the Capitol want from him? I have heard things strongly hinted and you'd have to be blind to miss the hunger in their predatory eyes when they look at him. He has not noticed and this week we have been so busy convincing people that we hate one another, convincing ourselves that we hate one another, we haven't really had the time to talk. It is better that way.

The gong sounds and I take off in a spray of white sand. None of the other's are used to running in this sort of footing, you wouldn't be unless you were from District 4. A few of the clumsier ones have fallen, the careers are staggering. I slide to a stop and snatch my knife just as a large boy barrels into me from the side and knocks me away from the backpack, slamming me against the solid gold of the cornucopia. Both on our hands and knees, he turns toward me with a club and I kick sand in his eyes. Bellowing and blundering around like some great walrus, I pull the knife and slam it into the back of his neck. For a second it skids across bone and then finds it's purchase between two vertebrae and his dieing scream hurts my ears.

I dodge the spray of blood and catch movement from the corner of my eye. I throw myself to the sand, grab the pack from under the boy's body and sling it over my back. Now that I am on my feet, it registers what a truly foolish move it was to venture this far in. I see a girl from five collapse to the ground with an axe in the back of her head. It's a mess of blood and screaming and frenzy, a field day for the careers and a nightmare for all the idiots who hung around. Here I am with only a knife-I hear the familiar voice yell, the voice I have known since my child hood. I see Finnick holding the harpoon I thought would be too hard to swim with, only just fending off the scythe of a tall, dark-skinned girl from 11 on the cliff side of the cornucopia.

I am acutely aware that I have hung around too long: those who were going to have fled and the career's are finishing with the last victims. I must act quickly or not at all. My lips skin back over my teeth as I pull my knife and run at the girl, she turns and swipes at my head with the scythe but I have dropped to my knees. Sliding in a cloud of sand I drag my knife across the back of her long legs, slicing cleanly through the muscular calves. My momentum carries me to the edge of the cliff and I fling myself out into open air from the bent position. It is not the beautiful dive I had hoped for, but it is a dive. My body breaks the surface of the water and I feel immediately better beneath it. I do not look beneath me, or around me but power forward with fierce, strong and _deliberate _strokes. My head breaks the surface and I clutch the knife in my teeth to free my hands. There is another shore maybe fifteen yards ahead of me, that is where I must get to as soon as possible. _Out _of the water, because I doubt very much the game makers would neglect to fill this artificial ocean with something diabolical. A girl's shrill scream and I glance back once.

District 11 has fallen into the water, screaming and thrashing and bleeding everywhere. Perfect.

I tear through the water now, fast but always deliberate. If I flail, I am injured prey. Something jostles me and I ignore it, don't kick or strike at it, just swim harder. Eleven's screams intensify, become visceral and full of unspeakable agony. I can feel the vibrations, the ripples of the surface of the water I know must be boiling with fins and teeth. My fingertips graze sand and I fling myself out of the shallows, gasping air and realizing that I have used much of my precious energy in my escape.

On the cliff, I see the remaining Career's but no Finnick. One of the pack waves at me, then tosses a body into the sea and they watch gleefully as whatever is making the surface of the water boil devours it in a fountain of blood. The body was pale and feeble, certainly not Finnick…who it appears did not join up with the career's after all. One of the figures hefts a spear and I scramble to my feet, sand sticking to my wet body. The weapon buries itself in the sand at my ankles and I grab it and then turn and head into the woods.

The next three days and on into the night are relatively uneventful, which worries me. Twelve cannon's go off the first night and one the next. The careers were unusually successful in their haul during the bloodbath and have calmed down to develop a strategy. But then again, two of those kills could be logically credited to me. Since I killed the boy and was probably the reason for 11's death. _A murderer and never been kissed. _The numbness that I feel is terrifying because I realize it is only one step away from frenzied madness. I live forever in fear of the one thing that will turn me into a blood thirsty monster even Capitol will not be able to control: If Finnick's face appears in the sky tonight. That I will not be able to handle. If that happens, I will win.

I curl up in my hammock and suck a scant amount of freshwater from the chunks of soft, inner bark I hacked out of the few tropical trees on the miniature island I'm still hiding on. I'm not comfortable in the trees, but have taken to them out of necessity. I have my knife, water purification tablets, salted fish(How appropriate…I'd suffered a brief fit of internal turmoil at seeing the fillets. I hope the audience did not see me nearly cry over a few stupid fish.), one metallic blanket, a box of matches and an empty water container. The only water I've been able to find so far has been salt and the condensation from setting out the extremely visible blanket has been barely sufficient. I'm cold and uncomfortable…I miss home desperately…

The first night I was on the train… I could not stop screaming. Even when Finnick wrapped his arms around my shoulders and held me so fiercely that it hurt. It had been terrible, staring at the inside of my compartment and unable to stop screaming, crying, writhing with terror and horror. My reaction had clearly terrified Finnick and an avox had entered the room and given me sleep syrup that Mags forced me to take. Drowning would have been better, I think. Instead, it felt like I was twisted in the net and being dragged from the water to be stabbed with harpoons and gasp for a breath I couldn't catch.

During training, Mags sits us down at dinner and gives us a piece of advice. That there are two ways to kill other tributes, that Finnick relies more on one that will win him the love of the audience than I do. She says that the best I can hope for is admiration at the way in which I will kill, as I will be frightening to the Capitol audience. I tell her that she cannot possibly know this, as I have never killed anyone before and very rarely felt the sincere inclination to do so before now.

"'Tis not 'bout whether I've seen you kill afore or I hadn't," Mags tells me quietly, patting my wrist in a way that is meant to be comforting. "'Tis something that you are. Like…dolphins an' sharks."

To anyone else, this would seem a ridiculous comparison. No one thinks of dolphins as killers, or acknowledges they have the capacity until they've seen it. But they do, perhaps even more effectively than sharks. What Mags is saying is this: Finnick is naturally beautiful and naturally good at all he does, he is also universally liked back in the District. A trouble-maker certainly, but Finnick is always the playful one with the quick laugh and the dazzling smile. Even when he got into fights with the other boys he never got 'nasty' just even. Quickly and decisively he eliminated the threat.

I cannot boast this style. My playfulness is rare and always seen as cruel, any trouble I make malicious. I went into fights with the intent that this would be the fight to end all others, no one would dare to challenge me, to lay a hand on my catch after this fight. My approach to situations always more calculated, circling the problem and deciding whether it was worth the energy to attack. Always thought came before emotion and whenever both were employed at the same time it was with disastrous, chaotic results. Like the screaming on the train when I finally realised what was happening. The frenzy…it is not hard to tell who is who.

"So, jump through a few hoops, dance on your tail and balance a ball on your nose and you should do okay." A cold thing to say, an angry thing. Finnick flicked a little bit of his fish soup at me across the table and sighed.

"Stop showing so much fin, Halcyone. People might get the wrong idea."

I do not care what these people think of me. These people who are entertained by watching us battle to the death. I am so focused that I almost don't see the little silver parachute land beside me. How could I have gotten a gift already? I don't need anything yet, the back pack was well stocked and I'm not in any noticeable pain. I pick up the gift by it's parachute and open the small, oblong box. Inside is a antivenin pen like the ones we have in District 4 to treat people when they tread on venomous fish or get stung by something. What the hell could I possibly need one for? I've not been stung by anything, nor even bitten. The water from the bark tasted like normal water, why in the world would Mags send me a…I stop and stare at the anti-venin pen as the realization hits me.

I grab my back pack and scramble out of the hammock, slicing through the vines at either end and shoving it in my backpack, stuffing the precious pen of antivenin into my jacket pocket and zipping it. For a moment I stand there, panicked and unsure of my direction. I swallow the urge to run around screaming his name in an effort to locate him, knowing that will only bring anyone with a brain and a pair of ears running to my location. Depending on the severity of the sting, he could be unconscious. And I only have anywhere from one hour to maybe five to find him and administer it. He must be close and too injured to do it himself or Mags wouldn't have bothered. And he cannot be too far from the water, since most of the poisons are so strong and so painful that they nearly paralyze their victims.

The arena is large and holds five islands separated by roughly two hundred yards of deep water. Four of the islands are small, no more than a mile and a half across and between them the water is no more than waist deep and no less then knee high, a deceptively beautiful and glittering aquamarine that I'm certain hides a terrifying obstacle or adversary. The island in the center is nearly all cliff on the side that I can see is thickly wooded. Which narrows Finnick's location down to three places: the island across from me or the two on the other side of the center. I reach the edge of my island and see the moonlit expanse of hip-high water before me. There is no telling what is hidden under the white sand, not to mention in the patches of brightly colored coral that dot this plain of shallows.

I am about to turn back for shore, planning to peel some of the plank-like bark off the palms to protect my feet, when I hear a small whistling sound and something catches in the fabric of my coat sleeve. I can feel the cool kiss of the metal dart against my skin, the glittering end protruding through the dark leather. Panic shoots through me and I fall to my knees. But then it occurs to me, my attacker has not fired another dart…perhaps they think they hit me with the first. I shudder visibly, grasp at my arm and tip sideways in the sand as though I am poisoned. A gamble, a possibly fatal gamble for Finnick and I. Whoever is the owner of this dart will pay for delaying me.

I hear the soft cuffing sound as someone walks toward me across the sand. I hope and pray that they are unfamiliar with the sort of poison they are using and that the affects are not noticeably different from my play-acting. I do not close my eyes, but keep them fixed on a point in the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the girl from 6 remove the blowpipe from her mouth and reach down to retrieve her dart. Before she fully realizes her mistake I knock away her blowpipe with a well placed kick that not only relieves her of her weapon but sends her staggering into the shallows. I lunge after her, clumsy in my haste but fury driven.

"Poison me when my back is turned, will you? WILL YOU!" I spit the words and snatch a hold of her back as she shrieks in panic. Only one weapon, I feel almost sorry for her. I ram my knee into her ribcage and her body bucks with the force of it. I fling her onto her back and she nearly takes a lungful of water. I pounce and try to pin her but she flails and my vision is obscured by senseless splashing. I'm having such difficulty trying to get a grip on her wrists that I don't feel the tug on my belt. Then the knife erupts from the surging water and churned up sand and I block it with my arm without thinking.

My shriek is sharp, panicked with jagged agony as I dig my knee into the girls shoulder and she loosens her hold on the knife, trying to keep her head out of the water so she can breathe and trying to claw for my face with her other hand. The amount of blood I am losing is disorienting, but I manage to take my knife from her and place it at her throat. She realizes and stops thrashing, staring at me in terror. Her expression makes me feel vaguely ill but I don't show it. Instead, I grit my teeth against the pain in my arm and growl at her.

"No…no, no, no…please, please don't kill me! I wont come after you I promise, just don't-" The pathetic whinge in her voice, the tears not only sicken me but brings out some terrible, primal urge to kill her. The whining she makes will attract the others, the noise is high pitched and irritating. But she is useful yet as I know Finnick, and he could not have been so stupid as to tromp around in the shallows without having taken precautions.

"SHUT UP! Shut the FUCK UP and stay still before I ram the knife through your fucking skull!" She wails and whimpers and the sick stab of guilt lances through my chest again. "Who else did you shoot? WHO ELSE!"

"A boy from 12 and then another girl and a boy…" My fury must show in my face because she shrieks and recoils.

"Was he the boy from 4?"

"I don't know-" She tries to free herself and after a moments aggressive thrashing I subdue her and try to ignore the way blood is blossoming and swirling in the water from my arm. Dizzy…I cannot let her stall any longer.  
"TELL ME!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! He would have killed me-" I'm so angry I could kill her, slit her throat and coat myself in the blood.

"Where is he? How long ago?"

"An hour…the hovercraft probably-"

"He's paralyzed, not dead. Now tell me where he is!" She stops crying for the first time and glares at me, pulling up her chin against the edge of the knife.

"W-why should I? You'll just kill me-" She rambles, desperate to prolong her life. Meanwhile, the venom that she shot into Finnick has left him incapacitated and very slowly dieing somewhere. I resist the urge to scream at her and instead try and fix a pitying expression in place. All at once, the numbness that I felt at the reaping ceremony sweeps over me and I frown at the knife in my hands, I even manage to conjure up a few tears.

"I won't kill you, just tell me where he is so I can give him the antidote."

She tells me where he is and when she ask me if I love him, I tell her yes. Then, because I love him and I am grateful to her; I thank her before holding her head under water until she stops struggling and the cannon sounds. _May your spirit safely travel the sea's of the afterlife unto the red horizon, my friend. _and I loop her pack around my shoulders and take off in the direction she pointed me. I did the girl a service…if I could jump her that easily, I'd hate to think of what the career pack would do to her. They like to show off for the camera's and are just as much actors as they are cold-blooded killers. But then, I am one to talk.

When I get to the place the girl indicated, Finnick is not there. For a moment, I am horrified. She has lied to me after all and he is dying and I have wasted the hour it took me to get here…and then I find him. Curled up under a fern frond and shuddering in the moonlight, his normally golden skin pale and glimmering with fever sweat in the moonlight.

"Finnick! Finnick, I'm here…I'm here." I fall to my knees beside him, fumble with my pocket's zipper and then yank off the cap of the pen with my teeth, jamming it into his thigh. I hold it there for the required thirty seconds and then shove it back into my pack and half-drag, half-carry him further into the small, camouflaged cave he's been hiding in. I set him on what appears to be a sleeping bag lined with silver parachutes. I cannot remember anyone in the games getting more than five gifts from their sponsor's. There must be ten parachutes-I use one to bandage my arm at sit at the month of the cave. The anti-venin is working and I must keep him safe until he recovers. I look at where the blood is beginning to dampen the bandage and feel immediately light-headed. I can die later, now I must keep him safe.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **Ello again. Here's Annie! Of course Finnick is with Annie, guys. The OC is currently a human lizard :P. Sorry if it was misleading for a while there. Much of the emphasis in the last two chapters has been Halcy when she was HUMAN. Now she's a Mutt, so things are very, very different.

"_You swallowed everything, like distance, like the sea, like time. This was my destiny and it was in this the voyage of my longing fell. In you…everything sank." _~**Pablo Neruda**

Finnick watched Halcyone's eyes-the only truly human bit of her-lose their focus as she drifted off to sleep. She was cobbled together, like a humanoid version of the raptors one sees in Capitol mueseums. He could see bits of her original bone structure in the lowers legs and feet, the back. Mostly, they'd built the bone up on the claws, reshaped the joints, lengthed the spine…Finnick winced and returned his gaze to what was left of her face. The spark was out of her eyes as her breathing slowed and deepened. It was unsettlingly like watching something die and he nearly shook her awake again before thinking better of it. Let her dream, if she was still capable of dreaming.

He'd done everything in his power to forget her, to achieve some sort of closure. But for years he'd been haunted by it, felt responsible. One doesn't lose their child hood friend, their first love, and forget about it. Halcyone hadn't deserved to die, and she certainly hadn't deserved to become this horrifying patchwork of lizard and girl. Finnick could see her as she had been, the image of her branded on his brain…

_Warm white sand gave with each step he took, the sun dazzlingly bright in an electric blue sky. She was nestled back in a hammock between two tall palms, one arm thrown back above her head. Straight, fair hair fanned out in a halo of white around her face, silver lashes kissing her cheekbones. She looked so peaceful, lying there in her shorts and cropped tank. The edges of the rough fabric crusted with salt…Finnick Odair leans over and, grinning fondly, dumps her out of his hammock._

"_AH! FINNICK!" Halcyone surges up from the sand, as he knew she would. She lands a vicious punch to his ribcage and he doubles over in mock pain._

"_Easy, Halcyone. But you don't steal a man's hammock to shirk your fishing duties in."_

"_A boy. You don't steal a boy's hammock. You're no man…" She settles herself back into the hammock and clings, daring him to dump her out again. "Speaking of 'duties' shouldn't you be off helping the Marina unload her catch?"_

"_Oh, I'm still fishing." He bends over her again, grinning mischieviously as he grips the edges of the hammock. Her eyes, the colour of a stormy sea, regard him suspiciously and she tightens her hold on the fistfuls of hammock._

"_I don't see your catch anywhere."_

"_Oh, she's a big, blonde fish." The expression on her face is worth the shriek as he simultaneously pulls the hammock from it's mooring, neatly trapping her before he drags her across the sand and into the shallows. She fights her way out, mock beats him until they are laughing in the surf with the hammock around their shoulders…_

Tears ran down Finnick's cheeks and he rubbed them away furiously. He was an easy crier, always had been. It had made life hard for him when he had to bluff for the Capitol, a royal concubine and consort to whoever had petitioned Snow for his services. And by the sea, how he'd missed her. Halcy, coming home to Halcy, who had even then understood the bitter world so much better than he did…she would have made it all bearable.

But then, if they'd forced her into the same kind of nightmarish servitude as him would it have broken her? Halcy had an unconquerable spirit and it was beyond horrific to think of her in his position. He'd almost envied her sometimes…before the pain had become unbearable

His father, who he'd been unable to face for years now, had been unable to express his misery. He'd fallen at his son's feet and begged forgiveness. _Finnick. Oh God, Finnick. I'm so sorry, my boy. I'm so sorry you had to lose her._ The full gravity of her loss, it had not hit him until then. He would never find her napping in his hammock again, they'd never go swimming together and he'd never hear the devil-may-care laugh. She was _gone_, swept out to sea in a funerary boat. Never. Ever. Again.

In a way, the mindless whoring had made it easier. To let go of love, in favor of something so much less painful. There was no commitment, no history between him and these women. He would never hold their broken, bloodied bodies in his arms and cry for them in front of an entire nation. None of them would ever serve as bait in a sick game and have every last scream extracted from their lungs. None of them would ever use that tortured breath to scream for _him _to run. He would never care, and he was never responsible.

And then, years later, fate chose Annelise Cresta. Halcy's youngest step-sister and tiniest admirer was to take part in the Hunger Games. She'd been twelve when she watched Hal's Games, a little slip of a thing. Halcyone had never paid much attention to her step-relatives, they were mostly just acquaintances who lived in her house. She'd liked Annie, though. _My mother's favourite, little and good with knots._ He'd smiled at this to the point description. _So you like her, then? _Halcy had scrunched up her face and given him a sideways look. _She deserves to live a long and happy life. What do you want me to say, Finnick? The kid's alright…_

And Finnick had sworn then that Annie Cresta would live through her Games. He'd owed it to Halcyone and to himself. And he'd done it: scared out of her mind, damaged after the Games…but _alive._ He'd kept her alive, saved her. Then Annie, sweet, innocent, nubile little Annie Cresta…had charmed him. She was all the things Halcyone had never been and the sheer difference was wholly comforting. He'd been sick to his soul and bitter before Annie had come along. Beautiful in her own right and sweeter, kinder than Hal. Annie had given him purpose again, someone he could protect. Someone fate had let him have.

In truth, he'd forgotten Hal. She'd been like a distant, troubled dream that had faded from his memory until today. It wasn't as though Halcyone was suddenly 'alive' again, either. So much of her had died, surely had wanted to die. He'd recognized her when she looked at him with those _eyes_, and when she pressed her head to his knife. His love for her had faded, been replaced by bitterness…and later, by Annie. Who he loved so much it made him ache.

He'd thought-in a blazing swathe of idealistic stupidity-that somewhere, Halcyone must have been grateful. That he'd save the 'alright kid' who transformed into a beautiful, comely woman and that he was in love and happy. How wrong he'd been.

Finnick tipped back his head, he'd been hours telling Halcyone stories of their past. He was drowning in horror with the reliving of the tale…of his whole life. Sleep was the best medicine, he'd just lay back his head and sleep. Dream of Annie and the baby.

In Finnick's dream, his daughter had eyes like a storm and hair like sunlight.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's note: Sorry! It was a wait! Here's the next piece…

"_With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die."_ **~ Horace**

When I come back to consciousness, Finnick is asleep. He says a name over and over again in his sleep, not my name. I nudge him hard with my snout and he surfaces from the dream gasping and horrified. We need to go from this place, to get to the surface. It is bad for him to stay here, I know.

"What is it, Hal?" I clasp my jaw shut on his sleeve and tug, but it is not his sleeve that rips. I jerk back from him and turn my back, leaving two of my fangs in the fabric and bringing my claws to my face to clutch a bleeding flap of skin where it has slid away from under my eye. I open my jaws and feel the terrible tug of the flesh that was barely patched together ripping. For a moment, I am too horrified to make sense of it. I cannot look at Finnick, not knowing how I used to look-not looking like this!

"Hal, let me-" I whirl around, cornered. He gasps, recoils in horror as I try to babble at him, apologise.

" 'easse!" I plead, feeling my eyes burn, feeling the raw pain of the ripped flesh. It is no use, I am disgusting. I deserve his horror and his hatred. I turn my claws on myself-

"NO! HALCYONE!" His fingers wrap around the odd bones and I snarl, coil back, prepared to tear his head off his shoulders. Anything to make him see…he's digging in the tiny pouch on his hip for something. It's distracting, perhaps he is looking for a weapon. He pulls out a tiny roll of material and comes toward me. I tremble as he draws out a length of the material and reaches toward the flesh that is ripped and torn and hanging from my jaw. Carefully, he tapes it back in place. The action stings but I let him do it.

"Come on, Halcy. We have to get out of this bunker, you and I. Then, we'll fix this. We can take you to a doctor, the best in Capitol." He smiles at me, bends and kisses me on the snout. "Ready to go?"

It is good that I cannot speak. With the memories, I have stumbled across knowledge. A keen knowledge of my own mortality that is as present as the growing pain in my belly. No amount of medical attention will fix this.

* * *

"Wake up, Halcyone. Damn it!" Someone is squeezing my arm…hard. I blink and my eyes flutter open, there is a rusty crust covering my nose and cheek bones and drying in my eyelashes. Finnick, still looking peaked, is gripping my arm in a vice-like grasp. His eyes are wild with fear, like I've never seen them. The slice from Six, I must have lost consciousness sometime during the night…

"How are you feeling?" I murmur into moist dirt floor of the cave, smiling. I feel very weak, and I will probably die now. This is good, I did not really want for anything else but to see Finnick again. "After all…Finnick Odair is too pretty to die…"

" No, Hal! Don't you dare do this to me…" He looks around desperately as I cuddle into his wrist where he's holding pressure on my arm. He is snarling something at the ceiling, something I can barely make out:

"I swear on every fish in the damn ocean, on the whole bloody district; if you let her die now-" He is bargaining with the ceiling for my life. Perhaps he is not entirely healed from the delirium. "-I'll drown myself, damn it. Mags, I know you can hear me. Citizens of the Capitol, I know you're watching. I'm begging you…I can't-stay sane if she dies now-HAL!" Pain shoots through me as he shakes my wrist and I gasp, dragged from the murky depths of unconsciousness that precede death. Finnick stares at me, horrified by something, then turns his face back to the ceiling and starts pleading once more. "PLEASE! I'll kill anyone, I'll kill all of them! I'll do whatever you want, I swear! Just help us!"

I shut my eyes and reach for Finnick with my other hand, wrap my fingers around his. The unthinkable happens, his fingers slip from mine. He will leave me alone to die-Something sharp and small pierces my chest and my eyes spring open, my heart hammering. I wanted to be peaceful! What has he done to me! Finnick is a blur in my vision, tearing the silver parachute away from the small medical box and scrabbling in it for something, tossing aside an empty ampoule of whatever he just forced into my chest. My breath is coming too fast, I clutch at my chest.

"Finnick, Finnick-!" He grabs another syringe-this one massive-and yanks off the needle cap with his teeth, pushes me back and saws at the leg of my breeches. It hurts when he jabs the needle into the artery on the inside of my thigh and I claw at the stone wall behind me, gritting my teeth. It seems to take an age, whatever he's doing.

"You're alright, Halcyone. Just a little more…you need the fluids. The other syringe, I think it's to replenish your blood. Just stay with me-" I cannot help but let out a cry of pain as he slowly draws the needle out. He grabs me behind the neck, presses his forehead against mine.

We sit like that for a long time, his breaths are almost sobs and mine come in sharp pants of pain. He is murmuring something over and over again, it takes me a moment to make it out: _Thank you, thank you, thank you._ What kind of justice is there in a game where we must thank those who force us to play it for our lives? Like they are our Gods? I go to pull away from Finnick and nearly wrench something in my neck trying. His eyes spring open and he glares at me.

"Don't move."

"You're an idiot. You should have let me die."

"You don't get to die like that." He snaps, his grip on my jaw tightening.

"Peacefully, you mean?"

"Enough, Halcy. You may be able to fool a lot of people but I'm not one of them." He scoots back from me and stands up, packing away the medical paraphernalia and sniffing. He reaches down and, with almost no effort at all, picks me up and carries me deeper into the cave. "We're allies now so we have to work out a strategy. There are nine tributes still out there, counting a Career pack of five-"

He goes on like this for hours, filling the time with planning. He tells me that he was, in fact, briefly allied with the Career pack. But they started getting edgy when they realized how many gifts he was getting from sponsors and he split form them in the dead of night. He has a spear and a knife, besides the pack and sleeping bag.

"How many kills do you have so far?" I ask him, gnawing on a bit of cracker. I'm beginning to feel a little less like I am in immediate danger of dying with something in my stomach and the much needed fresh water. I counted cannon's wrong the first night. There were eleven, not twelve. Six's darts must have only managed to kill one of her intended victims.

"Just the girl from eleven. Accidentally. When I pushed her off the edge…what about you?" Finnick is looking a little green and runs a hand through his bedraggled copper-bronze hair, sniffing.

"The male from two and the female from six…the one who shot you." I murmur, screwing the cap back onto his water container and handing it to him.

"How did you-"

"Mags sent me the antivenin pen and I had no idea where to look. It was lucky that Six shot at me. She caught me in the sleeve but I waited until she got close. I overpowered her but she grabbed my knife…too weak to really do anything but this-" I lifted my freshly bandaged wrist. "-then I forced her to tell me where you were. Then I killed her."

"Forced?" Finnick looks at me but I cant bring myself to look at him and see the veiled disgust there.

"I bargained, told her I'd let her go." I don't want to discuss this with him, not now.

"But you didn't. How'd you kill her?"

"Drowning. The Careers would have made her suffer. For harming you, she deserved to die." That was my way of signaling the end of the conversation.

"I wonder if Mags was like you when she was in the Hunger Games. Because she knew what you'd do. To the letter. That you'd have kills on the first day, that you'd just _do it _because you had to. That you wouldn't mind dieing, either."

"I mind dieing very much," I frown at him. "The killing just _is_, Finnick. And did you not just promise the Capitol an arena full of dead tributes for medical supplies?"

"You've got a point there." He murmurs, giving me a wry grin. I get to my feet, wincing at a little residual wooziness from my brush with death. I pick up the spear he has leaning against the wall of the cave, unzip my back pack and yank the hammock out.

"Then let's do what we do best: Go fishing." I toss the net at him and he catches it, getting his arm a little tangled in the process.

"And pay bloody homage to Capitol and all the cities of the ancients." He smiles at me, the winning Finnick grin. I have him now, like all men he is dazzled by the prospect of conquest. _You must never think of them as people, Finnick. _I smile up at the ceiling where I think there might be a camera and blow it a kiss.

"To everybody back home, may your nets be as full as ours will be in a few hours. And to Capitol, thanks for the lovely fishing grounds!"

"Ready to play a deadly Game, Siren?" Finnick pulls on the two small waterproof backs and grins at me in a way that is as heart-stoppingly beautiful as it is fierce.

"I was born ready." And then, we walked from the cave and into a bloody red dawn.


End file.
